Even in the darkest of circumstances, the human spirit finds a way to speak.
When Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland were forced into ghettos, the world expected silence. Instead, they created music, poetry, literature, much of it in Yiddish, the language of a people determined to remain human in the face of dehumanization. In this session of A Closer Look, we explore this remarkable artistic resistance, centering on Isaiah Spiegel’s, Flames from the Earth, one of the only ghetto novels written by someone who lived it.
With the help of Julian Levinson, a professor at the University of Michigan, let’s dive deep and take a closer look at Yiddish cultural life in the Nazi Ghettos.
We hope you’ll be part of it. Space is limited, so reserve your seat early.
Info on Julian Levinson: Julian Levinson has taught at the University of Michigan since 2000, where he holds the Samuel Shetzer chair in American Jewish studies. He is the author of Exiles on Main Street: Jewish American Writers and American Literature Culture (winner of a 2008 National Jewish Book Award), as well as articles and book chapters about subjects including American Jewish literature, Biblical scholarship in the United States, and Hollywood’s approach to the Holocaust. He is also part of the movement to preserve knowledge of the Yiddish language and its culture, and he has translated numerous works of Yiddish poetry as well as Flames from the Earth, a novel about the Lodz Ghetto written by survivor-novelist Isaiah Spiegel.